TORONTO -- Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman finally shared the screen in the tense political thriller "A Most Wanted Man," a collaboration between two celebrated actors made heavier in gravitas given that it was the final performance of Hoffman's career.

Combined, the pair accumulated one Oscar win and another five nominations. The two actors -- mutually gifted with a screen-gripping intensity and a pliable talent that could fit a panoramic variety of roles -- had over the years visited one another's stage performances and clearly shared a reciprocal admiration before Hoffman's death of a drug overdose in February.

But as Dafoe does the promotional rounds for "A Most Wanted Man," which opens in Canada on Friday, he acknowledged some discomfort in answering questions about his late co-star.

"I don't know what to say ... it's an enormous tragedy that he died," said the thoughtful Dafoe in a recent telephone interview. "I didn't know him personally that much, although we knew each other's work.

"It's a tragedy. I can't think of someone that's going to fill his shoes. He was very particular and an actor I admired."

Adapted from a John le Carre novel, the twisty "A Most Wanted Man" casts Hoffman as the bedraggled head of a secret anti-terrorism team in Hamburg, the city where the 9-11 attacks were planned.

Soon, a young immigrant named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) materializes in tenuous condition, his body wracked by torture. As it turns out, Issa has claims to a massive inheritance, but can't access it because authorities have classified him as an escaped military jihadist. Rachel McAdams plays a hungry young human-rights lawyer who takes up his cause, while Dafoe is the shifty head of the bank holding his funds.

With a starry cast that also includes Daniel Bruhl and Robin Wright, Hoffman is unquestionably the lead -- a hard-living, flinty-eyed political chess-master whose patient approach frustrates local authorities.

And it was, in fact, Hoffman's patience as an actor that stood out to Dafoe.

"When you have a role that's well-drawn and you're the centre of the movie, you can be patient. He knows how to do that," he said. "He didn't push things. He was very present and he really received and became the role.

"And that's what you need when you're positioned in a movie like that."

Dafoe's interest in the film was largely stoked by the presence of director Anton Corbijn, the Dutch auteur who began in photography, veered through music-video direction and finally into feature films. Dafoe knew Corbijn already for his work as a still photographer and then was wowed by Corbijn's Joy Division biopic "Control."

And Dafoe says the uncompromising efficacy Corbijn developed as a photographer served him well onset.

"He's very clear and strong-willed," Dafoe said. "He's quite intense."

Dafoe concedes that he's drawn to that. Over the course of his career, he's shown a predilection for working with directors who are famously exacting, meticulous or even controlling, including Wes Anderson, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrera and Martin Scorsese.

Some actors chafe under the stringent pressures of a precise visionary, but Dafoe argues that that's ego-guided folly.

"I like to attach myself to someone who's dying to tell a story or make something and I like to feel like I'm a collaborator -- I'm their creature. I'm their agent," said the 59-year-old.

"It's your kind of security blanket. ... You have to have something that gives you the confidence that it's worth it and that it's interesting, and my best hedge against that kind of fear is to be in the room with people who are presenting interesting things, or have a fresh point of view, or are passionate."

To that end, he's recently collaborated with experimental theatre mastermind Robert Wilson on "The Old Woman," and files the director and playwright among those other visionaries.

"He has a very formal approach, he has a very strong language. For some people, they look at that and they say: 'How can you perform in that? He works everything out for you -- where do you find your enjoyment? Don't you want to improv and all that?'

"And it's like, boy, do they not understand performing. ... If you waste a lot of time and a lot of your energy trying to find that form, (then) you're going to give a very shallow performance.

"I guess," he added, "that explains once again why I love to submit to a vision."

Some of the early notices for "A Most Wanted Man" noted that the film's labyrinth complexity is more typically found nowadays in long-form cable TV than cinema.

It's an idea that Dafoe quickly dismisses.

"Everybody's in love with television, and television can do many beautiful things," he said. "But it lacks a kind of poetry and a kind of mystery that cinema has."

His attitude is perhaps understandable given his charmed recent run of film projects.

Since appearing in Von Trier's celebrated though notoriously difficult 2013 "Nymphomaniac" saga, Dafoe has also booked roles in the sleeper hit "The Fault in Our Stars" and Anderson's manic masterpiece "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which brought the Texas director his biggest-ever hit.

Dafoe also appeared in Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," so he's uniquely positioned to muse on why his latest film connected to such a degree.

"I just think it's masterful," he said. "I think something about this material matched his ... esthetic. I think people found it fun, where sometimes his obsessiveness and his specificity and his meticulousness puts people on guard.

"But you know -- I don't know," he added, a smile tugging at his tone. "For example, it's a headscratcher to me why more people don't like 'Life Aquatic.' So there!"